


stay here, honey (i don’t wanna share).

by katarama



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Begging, Body Worship, Character Study, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Gansey On Fire, Lawyer Adam Parrish, Light BDSM, M/M, Marking, Mutual Pining, Open Relationships, POV Adam Parrish, Polyamory, Spitroasting, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:54:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29053215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: Gansey’s relationship is open, but Adam’s isn’t.
Relationships: Background Henry Cheng/Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III/Adam Parrish, Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 17
Kudos: 109





	stay here, honey (i don’t wanna share).

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rjosettes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjosettes/gifts), [fempynchinsky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fempynchinsky/gifts).



> This fic is for Theo, who I love very much and who I promised some Pynchsey that did not end in pain. Many thanks to Lee (Verbyna) for the beta.

When Adam walks into the bar, his eyes find Gansey first.

It’s an old habit. High school at Aglionby was three years of finding himself looking at Gansey in spite of himself, three years of drinking in Gansey’s perfect skin and warm hazel eyes and ruffled brown hair. Gansey always had a presence to him, something that felt both born and bred. Something magnetic that demanded attention. Adam hated it and envied it. He felt the imbalance of it — he wasn’t born or bred to be anything. 

Tonight, his eyes find Gansey, and his first thought is _he looks tired_.

It wouldn’t be obvious to most people. Gansey’s shirt is crisp and clean, his posture free of slouching even from his perch on the bar stool. Adam watches as he chats with the bartender pouring him a drink, watches as Gansey flashes a Gansey smile. If Adam didn’t know Gansey, he wouldn’t have caught the little signs, the tells. Gansey’s glasses perched on Gansey’s nose. Gansey’s hands clenched a little too tightly around his drink. If he took them away, he wouldn’t know what to do with them.

It’s been ten years since Aglionby, ten years since he and Gansey lived in each other’s pockets (as much as Adam let them, as much as Adam would accept). A lot has changed since then. But Adam still knows what it looks like when his friend is playing the role of Richard Campbell Gansey III, instead of just Gansey.

“You’re early,” Adam says as he grabs a stool. The bar isn’t empty, but it’s less packed than it would be on a weekend. The bartender sends them glances until Adam orders a Diet Coke.

“I managed to get a moment free and knew if I didn’t take it, I would be in the office for another hour working on a press release,” Gansey says ruefully. “Isn’t it a little late to be having caffeine?”

“I have a deal signing next week. You’re my work break for the night, but I have stuff to do when I get back to the apartment.”

Adam watches Gansey for a second, watches the objections rise and fall in Gansey’s head. Gansey from ten years ago would have told Adam to take the night and relax. Gansey from ten years ago would have told Adam he needed the sleep more, that he was working himself to death, that if he didn’t slow down he was going to make himself sick.

This Gansey swallows those words, and Adam isn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed.

They sit and talk for a while. Gansey asks Adam about the deal he is working on. Adam tries to give him the high level summary, that it is for one of his firm’s big clients, that it is a really great opportunity and that he feels lucky to have been staffed on the deal. But Adam forgot that Gansey can’t ask about anything without wanting to get to the core of it. Adam forgot that Gansey knows him, too.

“So you hate your job, too?” Gansey says, roughly a drink and a half later.

Adam doesn’t even have the excuse of booze in his system for the way his body floods with relief at the question. The instinct to sell it still kicks in. “I knew it would be long hours. It’s a prestigious firm. I’m paying off my student loans and I have a 401(k) and good health insurance and money to spare. It’s exactly what I knew it would be.”

“And you hate it,” Gansey says, looking Adam in the eyes. He states it as a fact, something Adam can’t run away from. His expression is soft, as if it could blunt the impact of his words. As if he isn’t asking Adam to admit out loud something he resolutely refuses to say, even to himself, even to Ronan.

“And I hate it.”

He takes another sip of his Diet Coke. He wishes he had ordered something with alcohol after all. He doesn’t know how he can go back to his apartment and work with the words ringing in his ears. 

It wasn’t like this was his life’s passion since he was a kid. He knew he picked corporate law because it was a means to an end. Nothing that would put him in a courtroom. Something that would pay the bills. Prestigious and respected. No one looked at him anymore and saw Adam Parrish, trailer trash from rural Virginia whose father beat him. They saw a lawyer. People’s eyes glazed over when Adam talked about his job. It was Ronan, a literal farmer, who got more questions than he did.

Living at the Barns wasn’t everything Ronan thought it would be, either.

“I always knew I would hate this job,” Gansey says mildly. “I was never suited for politics, but my mother put in a good word, and I kept being promoted. I could hardly be ungrateful.”

Adam knows so many people who would kill for Gansey’s job, working as a Senator’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Adam also knows that Gansey never would have picked it for himself.

“If Ronan were here, he would say you should quit and get a boring Ph.D. and be a weird old professor,” Adam says. “He’d also tell you you look like shit.”

Gansey laughs, and something in Adam’s chest eases. “If Ronan were here, he’d tell you to have a drink and to quit acting like you’re going to waste the rest of the night working on disclosure schedules that you can definitely work on tomorrow morning.”

“And what about you?” Adam asks before he can stop himself. “What do you think?”

Gansey’s gaze on Adam, intense and focused, is a sense memory in itself, Adam’s heart beating fast and his tongue heavy in his mouth. “I think you should have a drink and quit acting like you’re going to waste the rest of the night working on disclosure schedules that you can definitely work on tomorrow morning,” Gansey says. “I think you should let yourself have the rest of the night off. I think when this deal closes, you should take a vacation, or at least a week off. I think you should let Ronan take care of you.”

Gansey hesitates, and Adam can almost fill in the words Gansey isn’t saying. That Gansey would take care of Adam himself, if Adam would let him. That Gansey would take Adam back to his apartment, if he didn’t want to drink in public. That Gansey would let Adam relax, really relax, in a way Adam doesn’t often let himself when Ronan is back at the Barns instead of with him in D.C. In a way Adam doesn’t always let himself even when Ronan is with him in D.C.

“It’s been years, but you haven’t changed much at all, have you?” Adam asks.

“Not when it comes to you.”

Adam sees the way that the night could turn from here. His thoughts race in a direction he hasn’t let them in years, has blocked off since he kissed Ronan in the Barns and saw Ronan’s face light up like Adam had just given him the world. He could see himself in Gansey’s apartment, Blue and Henry out of town, Gansey’s eyes on him as he strips his shirt off, Gansey’s hands on him as he tugs him to bed.

Gansey’s relationship is open, but Adam’s isn’t.

“I should be responsible tonight,” Adam says. The words are like pulling his own teeth, closing a door on himself. But Adam is nothing if not disciplined (in spite of wanting, in spite of always having this desperate, hungry thing in his chest waiting to swallow him whole). “But Ronan is in town next week. Maybe you can come over to ours.”

“I’d like that,” Gansey says. His hands clench tighter around his drink. Adam wants to reach out and grab one of his hands, to squeeze it reassuringly. To tug Gansey closer and let Gansey melt into him.

 _Not tonight_ , he reminds himself. _We’re being responsible tonight_ , he reminds himself.

Gansey doesn’t drink much, but Adam waits around to make sure Gansey gets in his Uber safely before he walks home. His apartment is quiet when he gets back, the empty space of an apartment for two filled only by one weighing him down more than usual.

“Tamquam,” Adam texts Ronan. His fingers hover over the email app on his phone as Gansey’s words echo in his head. As his own words echo in his head. There are 20 new emails. His laptop case sits on the table, haunting him.

“Alter idem,” comes the reply, without hesitation, and something in Adam’s chest loosens.

Gansey might be right this time, Adam decides. Just this once, the work can wait until morning. 

* * *

When Adam left his father’s double-wide trailer, Adam decided he would only ever belong to himself.

It wasn’t a small decision. It was making things harder on himself to preserve his independence. It was rejecting misguided attempts to pay for things for him. It was shrugging off affection he wasn’t ready to accept, that he saw as coming with strings attached. It was facing down the concerned looks from Gansey, the constant ‘ _not everything needs to be fucking hard, Parrish_ ’es from Ronan. Adam was tired of being controlled and never wanted to experience that again. If he stood on his own two feet, no one could make him do anything he didn’t want to do or be anything he didn’t want to be.

Belonging to himself didn’t always mean being himself. His friends didn’t always understand that, but it was something he needed to do at the time. It took a while to know that he could be his own person as himself. His perspective shifted with age, with the understanding that there was enough of him to be himself. It took longer to realize he could be himself and be someone else’s, too. He’s still working on it.

Ronan, on the other hand, was never only Ronan’s.

Adam still remembers the early days of getting to know Ronan. Or, really, he remembers the early days of getting to know Gansey, remembers the way that being with Gansey automatically meant being with Ronan. Ronan was uncomfortable silences and narrowed eyes and sharp laughter and the unmistakable feeling that Ronan was only putting up with Adam because Gansey wanted him to, and that there wasn’t much Gansey could ask for that Ronan wouldn’t at least try to give him.

There was never a moment when Adam wasn’t aware that Ronan was Gansey’s, first and foremost.

But, inexplicably, Ronan also became his, and he became Ronan’s. And Adam went away to college and to law school, and Adam came back closer to Ronan, closer to home. As close to home as he could get without the shadow of Henrietta haunting his dreams, and without sacrificing his career.

Ronan arrives in D.C. on a Saturday night so he can go to mass with his brothers Sunday morning. His face is steeled like he’s preparing for war (like he’s preparing for a week without sleep, a week of no dreams, a week of battling whatever dreams he has to prevent them from bleeding out into the world). Adam knows Ronan does this for him. It’s easier for Ronan to come to D.C. than it is for Adam to spend a week at the Barns. 

There wasn’t much Gansey could ask for that Ronan wouldn’t at least try to give him, but there isn’t much Adam could want that Ronan wouldn’t try to give to him before he even asked.

Ronan bangs around the kitchen while Adam finishes up some work so he isn’t starting the week playing catch-up. They eat dinner and Adam’s work stuff goes away, because if Ronan can make compromises for Adam, Adam can make compromises for Ronan, too. They attempt to watch a movie, but Adam can’t keep his eyes off Ronan, and Ronan presses a kiss to Adam’s hand, and things only spiral from there.

Adam misses him so much when they aren’t together.

After they clean up, they settle into bed, Adam’s eyes already drooping and Ronan’s night just beginning. Adam knows he has to stay awake a bit longer. Despite Adam’s tiredness, it’s the best time for conversations, because Ronan is sometimes bored enough to be thoughtful out loud instead of just in his head. Sometimes he isn’t. Ronan is less predictable the later it gets. The directionless anger that used to characterize this time of night for Ronan has calmed over time, but never completely went away. But it’s definitely a better conversation for nighttime than after mass on Sunday morning.

Adam has been thinking of how to approach this conversation since the night at the bar. It still sets his nerves on edge.

“Was there anyone in high school you wanted to do things with other than me?” Adam asks.

He feels certain he knows the answer. He isn’t sure Ronan won’t turn the question around on him first, throw in a pointed (and transparently fond) comment about Blue. But he knows in his gut that if Ronan answers the question, the answer will be yes.

He doesn’t expect the sharpened edges around an exhausted, “If you’re trying to get me to talk about K tonight, I’m not going to do it.”

The answer makes sense. Adam knew the way Kavinsky was about Ronan, knew that Kavinsky’s pack of wild dogs had spread more than one rumor about Ronan swapping blowjobs for Kavinsky’s dreamed pills. He knew Kavinsky eyed Ronan in a way that was possessive and hungry (in a way that looked like Adam sometimes felt). He wasn’t sure if the obsession was one-sided, though to hear Gansey talk about it, Kavinsky was a threat purely for the fact that he was all base instinct, and there were times when that was what Ronan thought he wanted. 

Adam thinks that Gansey’s perspective on this was maybe less than objective, and definitely missing part of the picture. 

It isn’t the answer Adam was looking for, regardless.

“I wasn’t,” Adam says. He doesn’t try to soften or soothe Ronan, because that doesn’t work. “I was thinking about Gansey.”

The long silence that follows Adam’s words makes him wonder if he should have rethought his approach after Ronan’s initial response, or saved this conversation for another night. Ronan’s head has the potential to be a fraught place on a good night, and his thoughts going straight to Kavinsky isn’t a good sign.

“We both wanted to do stuff with Gansey.” It comes out a bit more defensive than Adam would like, as if Ronan is only going to admit to this out loud if Adam goes there with him. “When you weren’t shoving his foot in his mouth for him, you looked at him like the sun shone out his ass. It was a weird ‘does Adam want Gansey or does Adam want to be Gansey’ thing. I couldn’t tell which of you I was angrier at. Just like when Blue and Gansey were acting like they were a secret, I couldn’t tell which of them you were jealous of.”

“Both of them,” Adam admits, nudging Ronan with his elbow. “And I guess I tried being Gansey, in college, so. Also probably both there. On the wanting him or wanting to be him.”

“Fucking bisexuals,” Ronan says. Adam is deeply relieved at the hint of a grin finally starting to creep across Ronan’s face. “Always has to be both.”

Adam can’t help but laugh, and the tension melts from the conversation. This is a Ronan that Adam knows how to navigate. Adam asks Ronan when he started liking Gansey, if it was the first time he saw Gansey’s hands, and Ronan flips him off before he tells him it was _when I saw him driving the Pig for the first time, and don’t you dare make a thing of that, you fucking asshole, I’ve heard you tell the story of how you met too many fucking times to not know that for you it was when he asked you to teach him to fix his fucking car_ , and Adam laughs again, because he didn’t know it at the time, but Ronan isn’t wrong, and it’s funnier in hindsight.

“I think,” Adam starts, treading into more speculative territory. “Gansey was probably at least a little in love with all of us. I don’t think that ever went away. I met up with him at a bar this week. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, and Blue and Henry are traveling again. I think he wanted the company — I told him to come over here when you were in town. But I forgot what it feels like when Gansey is… Gansey. Himself Gansey, not buttoned up for his mom’s friends Gansey.”

Ronan snorts. “You were constantly fighting with Gansey because he was himself Gansey.”

That isn’t exactly right, but Adam doesn’t correct him. “He was clueless,” Adam says, but it comes out fond. Definitely more fond than it ever would have back when they were in high school, even though thinking about Gansey’s casual attitude towards money, in particular, still makes Adam’s stomach lurch. “It was like he came from another world. It was infuriating sometimes. You fought with him because he was Gansey, too. You just needed a Gansey in a way I didn’t.”

Adam knows that Ronan doesn’t need Gansey in the same way he used to anymore. He knows that Ronan is more at peace with himself, less eager to tear himself to shreds to make himself feel something other than blinding anger or grief. He is more settled in his own skin, less afraid of himself. It’s a feeling Adam understands.

Adam also knows there are still nights when it’s 2:30 AM and Ronan jostles Adam awake slipping out of bed, Ronan shushing him, _it’s Gansey, go back to sleep_. There’s a part of Ronan’s nights that will always belong to Gansey, no matter how much time passes. No matter how much lingering hurt there was for a while about the way Gansey died, about the way Gansey turned to Blue and Henry after. 

There’s a part of Ronan that will always need Gansey, even now that he can survive without him.

“You didn’t want to need anything back then,” Ronan says. “You still don’t, most of the time. But you didn’t bring this up to rehash high school shit. So is there something you need?” The question isn’t unkind, but it’s pointed. It’s the kind of question Ronan asks so Adam can’t run away from the answer.

“Not need, but-“

“Want,” Ronan says, cutting in, amending his question. “Is there something you want?”

The weight of the question is heavy. Ronan seems to realize it, too, from the way his gaze challenges Adam, cutting off empty protests before they gather in Adam’s mouth. _Everything_ would be an honest answer, because that was something Adam never outgrew. The wanting was the selfish part of himself he learned to suppress, because wanting never got him anything, but it never went away. Ronan always manages to see it when it gets too close to the surface. It never fails to surprise Adam when Ronan doesn’t view it as a bad thing. 

Ronan never wants an explanation, not like Blue always wanted, when they were dating, or like Gansey always seems to expect. Ronan doesn’t need to know why, doesn’t need a monologue about feelings or reasons. He just wants to know, so he can take care of it. So he can take care of Adam. 

It doesn’t make it easier to put the thoughts into words.

“I’m not sure if you’re going to like it,” Adam says, priming himself for this time to be different, for this particular want to be too much.

“Try me,” Ronan responds, so Adam does.

* * *

It took Adam a while to learn that Gansey is different at night.

Gansey during the day has always been manners and charm and idiosyncrasy wrapped up in an appealing old money package. Gansey during the day is hard not to like. Adam tried and failed. Gansey’s singular interest in Welsh history (an outgrowth and a remnant of his dead Welsh king) is treated as quirky instead of obsessive. His orderly form of chaos is indulged. The Pig, its own form of beloved mechanical disaster, has always been a hodgepodge of receipts and maps and notebooks, a whirlwind of paper that seems to follow Gansey wherever he goes. Hands and clothes are often stained with coffee or ink or both. And yet Gansey during the day has a presence to him, an authority and certainty that bleeds from the marrow of his bones.

Gansey during the day is a lot. Adam still sometimes has trouble wrapping his head around him, and around the way that Adam should, by most metrics, hate his guts.

Gansey at night is different. 

It isn’t supposed to be a nighttime meeting. They all agreed on 6:30 PM dinner at Adam and Ronan’s on Thursday night, pizza delivered from a place slightly less shitty than Nino’s. Adam’s deal is supposed to sign on Wednesday, so he views it as a reward, something to look forward to. 

The deal doesn’t sign Wednesday. The deal doesn’t sign Thursday afternoon, either, and suddenly, it’s 6:00 PM Thursday evening and Adam is fielding frantic emails from the senior associate pushing to tie up loose ends for a 9:00 AM signing the next morning.

He opens his group chat with Ronan and Gansey to apologize in advance for being late and finds two unread texts: a screenshot, sent by Gansey, of a Twitter post his boss made, and a message reading “does 9:30 work instead?”

Adam quickly agrees, relieved that he doesn’t have to be the one delaying plans, for once. Ronan texts “fine” before Adam can start to wonder if he will actually see it in time. Adam refocuses and buckles down, powers through his to-do list and takes advantage of a lull at 8:20 PM to pack his bags and head home.

By the time Gansey shows up, Adam’s mostly monitoring work through his phone. Ronan is shredding Adam’s old newspapers for reasons he never quite explained and Adam isn’t sure he wants to know. The pizzas are on their way, and Adam’s stomach has been grumbling for an hour and a half. Adam expects to save important conversations for another time, because he expects Gansey to show up looking like Adam would feel in his shoes — exhausted, the kind of bone dead tired that only comes from trying to persuade impossible people to be reasonable.

He should have remembered that his brand of exhaustion and Gansey’s brand of exhaustion are rarely the same.

When Ronan lets Gansey into the apartment, Gansey’s tie is already undone and his shirt is untucked. When Gansey sits down at the table and fields questions about his day, his shoulders don’t slump and his hands don’t shake. His voice is steady, but every word out of his mouth feels like it’s loaded with urgency, like he needs to finish talking about it so everything else in the world can drop away except for the three of them sitting in the kitchen. 

Adam watches the way Ronan’s entire body zooms into focus around this Gansey, the way Ronan starts to look, to respond more. It occurs to Adam that this is a Gansey that Ronan knows intimately. This is a Gansey on the brink, a Gansey of nightmares of bees and orange juice runs when nothing else will help, of carving away a space in the world in which everything feels like more.

Gansey at night (Gansey at his most reckless, his most impulsive) was always Ronan’s favorite Gansey. The Gansey that felt most like he belonged to Ronan, too.

“I’m going to quit my job,” Gansey says after the pizzas arrive, before Ronan even makes it back to the table from the door. He says it like he’s daring Adam and Ronan to challenge him. Neither of them does. “Unfortunately, they keep wanting to promote me, and I’m afraid that the only place to go from here is up. I’m going to spend my whole life doing something I hate just because I am good at it. I’m not certain I know what I want to do for the rest of my life, but I’m certain that it isn’t this.”

Adam doesn’t know what to say.

“About fucking time,” Ronan says, without missing a beat. 

Gansey’s shoulders loosen from relief. “Adam was rather frank the other night about your perspective on this. I have been considering it.”

Adam almost expects Ronan to send a pointed glance in Adam’s direction with an even more pointed comment that at least someone considers his perspective on quitting jobs they hate. But, apparently, Adam is escaping the additional scrutiny tonight. Ronan seems to pick up an undercurrent to what Gansey said that Adam missed, because he sits down across from Gansey, pizza boxes stacked but untouched on the table, and looks Gansey in the eyes.

“Right now. Not four fucking years from now, or a month from now, but right this second. What do you want?”

It is a question similar to the one Adam struggled with just days before, the concepts of should and shouldn’t, deserving and undeserving, shrinking wanting smaller. 

Gansey doesn’t struggle with an answer. When pushed for immediacy, when he’s like this, he barely even hesitates. Gansey at night is a Gansey made for wanting impossible things.

“I want to be happy,” Gansey says. “I want to leave work at the door and not carry it with me everywhere. Or to enjoy what I’m doing if I do carry it with me. I want to quit my job. I want to stop worrying every second of the day about things I can’t control. I want to sleep. I want to see Blue and Henry. I want to eat dinner with you and Adam.” 

It’s here that Gansey finally pauses. Adam can feel himself holding his breath, even as Ronan waits in expectant silence. Adam never understands how Ronan can be so patient in moments like this when patience eludes him every other moment of the day.

Adam is not quite so patient right now.

“Do you want us?” Adam cuts in, his voice sounding steadier than he feels. “Really want us, not ‘I’m making impulsive choices tonight’ want us.”

The question hangs in the air. Adam’s stomach churns, the uncertainty of the moment flooding in. 

“I do want you. Both of you.” 

“Oh,” Adam says. 

Gansey looks back and forth between the two of them. Ronan’s expression is cautious, like he is waiting for the ‘ _but…_ ’, for the other shoe to drop. It occurs to Adam that throughout his and Ronan’s conversation, Ronan held back his own thoughts on what he wanted to do about his feelings. Adam wonders if he thought this would only ever be a hypothetical.

“I never knew what words to put on it, so I didn’t,” Gansey continues, sounding more insistent in his confession when it was met with silence from Ronan and near-silence from Adam. “Ronan sometimes used brother, and considering how loaded of a term that had become for him, I… did not know what to make of it. By the time I figured it out, on the road with Blue and Henry, you were together, and I didn’t know if I was allowed to want you anymore. It’s why I saw you less in person, after, even once we were out of school. I thought you might notice.”

Ronan breathes out, like something Gansey said was finally making sense. Adam will need longer to process. Ronan seems to know this. His knee nudges Adam’s under the table, a silent confirmation that he has things from here. It’s a relief to Adam, who doesn’t know what to say in the face of Gansey’s naked earnestness. 

He told Ronan before that what he realized at the bar was not that Gansey was behaving differently, but that it felt charged in a way he didn’t remember it feeling before. It felt like possibility. 

It felt like things could turn the way this conversation had, Gansey’s normally soft words and hazel eyes lit up. Ronan just hadn’t been there to feel it with him.

“What do you want, right now?” Ronan asks again. 

“I want to eat dinner with you and Adam. And then I want to kiss you both, if you’d let me. I want to see where things go from there.”

“Okay,” Ronan says. “Pizza first, then.”

The butterflies in Adam’s stomach would rather have the kissing first, but the rest of his stomach agrees with that plan.

* * *

Adam loves Ronan.

He didn’t know if he would be able to, at first. He remembers his initial terror after Ronan first kissed him and he kissed back. He remembers Gansey warning him not to hurt Ronan. It was a thought that burned itself into his head. He wasn’t sure of his capacity for love back then, especially in comparison to Ronan. For someone who could be so sharp, Ronan always seemed to have enough love and devotion for three people. For someone who could be so loud about frustration, or anger, or grief, Ronan knew how to show love in quieter ways, ways Adam knew how to accept.

The two of them still don’t say the words much. They’ve developed their own rituals, to say it and show it, that work for them. But Adam feels it, feels the way it grounds him when things get hard, the way it pushes him outside of himself.

Adam watches Ronan throughout dinner. Adam watches the way that Ronan keeps looking at Gansey like he might not be real. Ronan does not get the luxury of wondering if this is a dream, but as the reality filters in, Ronan becomes less and less able to hide the feelings from his face.

Adam sends Gansey to look for a spare toothbrush and takes Ronan to their bedroom, sits him down on the bed and wraps his arms around Ronan.

“We don’t have to do this,” Adam says to Ronan, as a reminder. As forgiveness, and understanding. They didn’t have this part of the conversation, before. Ronan had seemed so calm. But if this is intense for Adam, it has to be much more so for Ronan, who loved Gansey more than himself before he knew Adam existed. Who told Adam he sometimes used to think Gansey was so hot it made him angry, back when nearly anything could make Ronan angry. 

“I know. But I want to. I really, really fucking want to.”

“Okay,” Adam says. He pulls away to give Ronan a kiss, to give Ronan something familiar and steadying. He can feel Ronan practically vibrating out of his skin. “Then I hope you’re ready for your first threesome.”

“Christ,” Ronan replies, forcing exasperation into his tone to mask everything buried underneath. “You didn’t have to go and call it that.”

“Call it what?” Gansey asks from the doorway.

Adam laughs, leaving Ronan to aggressively deflect from the fact that he was so in his feelings about this that he never paused to consider how to describe the sex out loud.

Adam loves Ronan, and Adam loves the way Ronan loves.

* * *

In high school, in his tiny bedroom above a church, Adam’s mind sometimes wandered to Gansey and Ronan, alone at night in Monmouth. 

The fantasies usually looked like this: Ronan kneeling naked at the foot of Gansey’s bed, Gansey’s hand cupping the back of Ronan’s neck for absence of hair to tug as Ronan looked up at Gansey, reverent and eager to suck his cock; Gansey with his hand around Ronan, Ronan moaning and swearing, Gansey asking if Ronan would be good for him if he let him come; Gansey inside Ronan, on top of Ronan, bracketing Ronan in and pinning him down with his hands above his head, asking if Ronan needed more, if it was enough.

In Adam’s fantasies, it was rarely enough.

Adam has learned over years of being with Ronan that he got a lot right about his boyfriend. He was right about the way that Ronan often finds release in being pushed as far as he can go, that Ronan’s mouth is as filthy as it is made for worship. 

He didn’t expect the way that care is central, sometimes, in a way that means Ronan easing Adam into trying things he didn’t realize he would like, and liking them. He didn’t expect the way that sex requires words, sometimes, the way that sex with Ronan became the starting point for every ‘what do you need’ and ‘what do you want’. He didn’t expect the way that that could be sexy, too, sometimes.

The reality of sex with Gansey is more like the reality of sex with Ronan than it is like Adam’s teenage fantasies.

Gansey kissing Ronan is hotter than Adam imagined. Adam can picture perfectly how kissing Ronan feels when it’s him, but it’s different watching from the outside. It’s different with Gansey, with this Gansey, faintly illuminated by the glow of Adam’s bedside lamp. This Gansey looks like he wants to devour Ronan, pressing closer and kissing deeper, his glasses pushed carefully up the bridge of his nose.

“You gonna keep those on?” Ronan asks, breathless when Gansey pulls away.

“Well, yes, I’d like to see,” Gansey says, and Ronan laughs, the sound so full and big that Adam’s heart swells in his chest. 

The thing about Ronan being both his and Gansey’s is that he is best, this way. He’s best when he gets to be with them both, fully owned. It’s the realization that finally sets Adam’s nerves at ease, and that refocuses him. This shouldn’t be about Adam.

Adam kisses Gansey before Gansey can take the initiative. He slows the pace down, because they have all night, and he wants this to last. He doesn’t want to step away from this later and feel like all of it was rushing to the end, if they only get this once. 

Gansey is the one to pull away, and when he does, Adam is reassured they are on the same page. Gansey asks, loud enough so Ronan can hear, “Can you tell me what he likes?”

Adam says he can, and Gansey grins, warm and soft.

There’s a world of possibility flashing through Adam’s head, of all the things they could do with three pairs of hands, three mouths, three dicks. He settles on something he can give to Ronan, something Ronan wouldn’t ask for when surrounded by two people he’d give anything for.

“Well, first of all, you should strip him down.”

* * *

Adam learns quickly that Gansey approaches sex like Gansey approaches everything else he loves, with an intensity and detail-oriented fixation that Adam wouldn’t know what to do with directed his way but that is as natural as breathing for Ronan. When Gansey takes off Ronan’s shirt, his hands skim up along Ronan’s sides. When the shirt is off, Gansey’s hands are back to the leather bands on Ronan’s wrists, asking Ronan if he wants those off, too.

“Sure,” Ronan says, like it’s casual, like it’s easy. Like it isn’t a form of nakedness so vulnerable that he took months to suggest it to Adam. 

Gansey unzips Ronan’s pants and tugs them off, but doesn’t move to take off Ronan’s underwear. Adam is good with that, for now. He figures it’s as good of a time as any to strip down himself, so he starts taking off his own shirt, not realizing he has two pairs of eyes watching him, one expectant and one awed, until the shirt is on the floor.

“You should probably undress, too,” he tells Gansey, to deflect some of the attention. Gansey is still drinking him in, not used to this body. It’s different from when they were teenagers. It’s a body that Adam can afford to feed, a body that Ronan frets over, a body that feels strong and healthy and good.

“Right,” Gansey says, his face flushing.

Adam would be lying if he said he isn’t watching Gansey undress just as closely as Gansey watches him.

It doesn’t take long for Adam to start to feel like he’s directing the most personal kind of porn. Gansey sucks a mark into Ronan’s neck, and then another, the shape of Gansey’s mouth red against Ronan’s pale skin, making Ronan moan. Ronan lies down on the bed and Gansey kisses a line starting at the nape of Ronan’s neck down Ronan’s back, his fingers tracing the edges of Ronan’s tattoos in a way that feels so intimate it sends shivers down Adam’s spine. 

He’s going to have to describe it to Ronan later, the way Gansey looks like he’s touching something holy.

Adam lets Gansey detour down further, biting marks into Ronan’s thighs. Gansey finally strips Ronan’s underwear off, drinking in Ronan’s ass, his hard cock, and he once again looks back up to Adam, asking for the bigger picture.

“I’m going to open him up and fuck him,” Adam says, “while he sucks you off.”

The soft “ _fuck_ ” that fills the air comes from Ronan. The expression on his face when it hits, when he looks up at Adam and sees that Adam is serious, that this is something he gets, makes everything worth it.

The intensity turns back up, from there.

Adam takes his time opening Ronan up, going slower than he normally would with Gansey’s eyes drinking in Adam’s every move like he’s committing it to memory. Adam loves drawing this part out, Ronan pushing past the point of impatience and spiraling into need, finally giving in and begging Adam to give him more. Adam has been hard for ages, but it never seems important when everything narrows in. He feels aware of everything, in the moment, the sweat gathering on Ronan’s skin and the tension in Ronan’s calves and toes and the noises spilling from his mouth, the way Ronan keeps opening his eyes to remind himself that Gansey is still there. 

Adam wants this to be the most of everything for Ronan — his cock leaking a wet spot into the bed, his face flushed, his hips barely restrained from seeking more friction before he’s filled up in a way he’s never experienced before. 

When Ronan begs Gansey for his cock, when Adam tells Gansey he can give it to him, Gansey only makes Ronan wait long enough to put on a condom.

None of them last long once they’re both inside Ronan. Ronan sucks Gansey’s cock like it’s a lifeline, a singular point of focus to keep himself from coming before he’s ready. Ronan squeezes tight around Adam’s cock, like his body is trying to pull Adam in closer and deeper, to keep him there so he can never leave, or stop. Gansey’s voice is throaty and strained when he tells Ronan how hot he looks, how perfect he is like this. When he finally tells Ronan he’s going to come and then swears when Ronan responds by zeroing in on the head of Gansey’s cock.

Adam comes to the visual of Gansey pressing a finger against Ronan’s swollen lips, Gansey’s face open and appreciative, his glasses sliding down his nose and his hair curled at the edges. Ronan sucks Gansey’s finger into his mouth. Adam hardly wants to close his eyes. But he fills Ronan up and gives Ronan more of his weight, reaches his hand around to make Ronan come before he has time to wonder if he’s allowed.

“You want me to go grab stuff to clean up?” Gansey asks after a moment, once Adam catches his breath. Adam sees it for what it is, offering Adam a moment alone with Ronan to process and check in without Gansey there to intrude.

“Don’t worry about it,” Adam says. If it were anyone else, anyone other than Gansey, Adam would have given a grateful thank you. “Just make sure he’s comfortable and be you right now. I’ll be right back.”

Adam comes back to the sight of Gansey resting in their bed alongside Ronan, pushing his glasses back up his nose and then tracing along the lines of Ronan’s tattoo again, talking with Ronan. It isn’t until Adam gets closer that he catches any of the words. Gansey suggests that they all get tested before the next time, so if Ronan wants his come, he can have it. 

The softness of it makes Adam hesitate, for a moment, the way the two of them fit so naturally together without him. He tries to shove the thought away before it can gain traction. It isn’t a new thought, and if it wasn’t a problem when they were high schoolers, it shouldn’t be a problem now. He reminds himself that he made this go smoothly. That he is the one that knows Ronan’s body like the back of his hand, that pointed Gansey in the right direction. He has no reason to be jealous of Gansey, other than all of the reasons he was always jealous of Gansey. He tries to remind himself that he has no reason to be jealous of Ronan, either. That these are thoughts he can grapple with when they won’t ruin the afterglow.

The promise of a next time, on the other hand, has him stopped dead in his tracks.

“Adam doesn't like doctors, but we can do that,” Ronan mumbles, like Gansey hadn’t just offered something new. 

Gansey looks up and sees Adam watching, but Adam doesn’t interrupt as Gansey tells Ronan that this at least shouldn’t be bad, as far as doctors go. 

“Washcloths,” Adam announces, breaking the moment before it can turn weird, Adam stressing and Gansey overcompensating and Ronan getting frustrated with both of them.

“Thank fuck,” Ronan groans. “If you took any longer, I was gonna pass out anyway.”

“If having both of us can get you to sleep, we should do this more often,” Gansey says.

He looks at Adam knowingly as he says it, as deliberate of a statement as he can make that he is serious. That doing this again wasn’t an empty offer. His expression spells out promises that there will be more conversations later, but it soothes the worst of Adam’s flare of insecurity.

“A new sleep hypothesis,” Adam starts, but he doesn’t make it any further than that.

Before he can finish his sentence, Ronan emphatically flips him off, and Gansey starts to laugh.

* * *

Two weeks later, Adam walks into a bar, and his eyes find Gansey first.

It’s a Friday night, so the bar is packed. He and Gansey are there to celebrate. Gansey gave his two weeks’ notice the morning after he stayed over with Adam and Ronan and would not be persuaded to stay on longer, even when his mother made two separate calls trying to coax him into helping find his successor.

When Adam sees Gansey, he thinks he hasn’t seen him look so happy in a very long time. There is a bitter part of Adam that envies Gansey’s ability to quit his job without a fallback plan, but Adam is resolved not to bring that up, unless Gansey is particularly insufferable.

He isn’t insufferable at all.

Gansey lets Adam buy them both drinks. They talk about Blue and Henry coming back in town in another month or so. They talk about Adam’s deal signing. They talk about how horrible Gansey’s boss was and about how great it will be that Gansey no longer has to work for him.

Near the bottom of their drinks, the conversation finally turns to Ronan, who couldn’t make it into town until the next night. 

Adam and Ronan had talked about things a little bit. Ronan settled a lot of questions by sending a text to their group thread telling Gansey to make sure Adam had some fun before he got there. It hangs between Adam and Gansey, both of them waiting for the other to broach the subject.

“I know what you were doing, by the way,” Gansey finally says when the conversation on renovations to the Barns runs out. “Two Thursdays ago. Ronan knows as well. He mentioned it to me last night.”

“You know what I was doing?” Adam knows where this is going, if it is something Gansey and Ronan have been talking about. He isn’t going to admit that out loud just yet.

Gansey looks at Adam like he’s indulging him, but he responds, anyway. “You focused on Ronan before he could focus on you.”

It’s a testament to how well Gansey knows them both that he chose to frame it precisely that way. Adam beating Ronan to the punch, delaying the inevitable moment when it occurred to Ronan that this was another way he could try to give Adam everything. From the careful look on Gansey’s face, like he’s holding onto a question he’s afraid to ask, Adam thinks Ronan must have gotten there by now.

“He loves you,” Adam says simply. “He wanted it longer and needed it more.”

“What do you wa-” Gansey starts, but Adam cuts him off before he finishes the sentence.

“I want for people to stop asking me what I want. It’s hard to always be the one wanting.”

Gansey looks frustrated. Adam can see the gears turning in his head, wondering if maybe Adam hasn’t changed when it comes to him. In many ways, Adam hasn’t. There is still iron in his bones, and a stubborn impulse not to let Gansey get carried away giving Adam things he doesn’t need and can’t accept.

Adam has changed enough to know when he’s the one being unreasonable, instead of Gansey, though. When he’s rejecting something that could be good just because he’s afraid.

“Look,” he says. “If you’re asking if you can take me home with you, the answer is yes. If you’re asking if you can give me all the things I sometimes let Ronan give me, then… the answer is not yet. It took time with Ronan, and it’s harder with you.”

“But you’ll let me give you something?” Gansey asks. His voice is tentative. He hasn’t ruled out the possibility that Adam will say no.

“Yeah.” Adam reaches out for Gansey’s hand and unclenches it from his cup. “I’ll even let you pay for the Uber.”

Gansey lets it go unsaid that for high school Adam, that would have been a major compromise. He takes the peace offering for what it is and pulls out his phone before Adam can change his mind.

Adam knows that this is going to be another part of his life built on compromise. He knows there will be moments when Gansey still doesn’t get it and moments when he makes things more difficult than they need to be. That was built into the fabric of Adam and Gansey from the start. Ronan was Adam’s and Ronan was Gansey’s. Gansey at night was Ronan’s. Adam wanted no part in being anyone’s until he realized that it wasn’t weakness, or a loss of himself, but Adam in particular resisted becoming one of Gansey’s things.

Watching Gansey light up at the possibility of paying for an Uber after two nights in a bar and one night in Adam’s bed, each time respecting Adam’s boundaries, Adam thinks there could be space for something different now. He thinks there could be space for them to be on equal footing, neither of them being owned but both of them being each other’s.

That might be something he could want out loud. 

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr at [sleepy-skittles](https://sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com/).


End file.
